


J'ai Vu le Loup

by Gileonnen



Category: Bisclavret - Marie de France
Genre: Allegory, Crusades Humor, Established Relationship, Hunting, M/M, Medieval, Provencal songs, Royalty in Compromising Positions, Umlauts, Werewolf, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 16:51:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The hunt collapses the distance between man and beast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	J'ai Vu le Loup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mardy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mardy/gifts).



The harriers caught the scent first of all, and in their agitation they milled about the pages with their fine, sleek noses to the ground; they whined and snarled and snapped at one another, eager to pursue and eager to flee at once. The fierce alaunts strained at their leads as though something of the harriers' unease had communicated itself to them, and their rough voices mingled with the beat of horses' hooves and the wind-caught snap of banners. The hounds did not bell full-throated, as they might have in pursuit of a deer or a boar--there was a queer, strangled hush to their noise that was more than exhaustion.

By now, the sky was as blue as the Virgin's robe, crossed by the boughs of ancient trees and shot through with stars. Bisclavret could barely see his breath on the air; soon, he would be able to see nothing at all. "We should turn back, my lord," he said, turning to meet his king's eyes as his horse danced nervously beneath him. "The girl's probably cold and frightened, and it will be too dark to hunt anything soon--let alone what we mean to find."

"Too dark for men," said the king, and in the starlight his eyes shone. "But they've got its scent now."

"That they have," Bisclavret answered softly. The dogs were beginning to scurry about the horses, careless of crushing hooves; they longed more than anything to be away, away-- "Here," said Bisclavret to a page, who looked up to him with his earnest face luminous in the darkness. "Take my horse. I'll circle around."

"Yes, sir," answered the page at once. He caught at the reins, careful to stand well back from the dismounting baron; he knew, just as the hounds knew, that he was sharing ground with a wild and canny beast.

The dogs had tried to tear him apart, too, at first. They had known to fear and hate the garwolf, until the king had trained them otherwise.

He made his way slowly through the forest, and the sound of his passage rang loud in his ears, leather shoes beating hard against the clear earth of the game trail. It would be a hare's trail or a fox's, he thought, by the peculiar evenness of the ground; a hart's sharp hooves would have left deep grooves in the muck of this morning, and they would have frozen clear as writing as the evening chilled the earth. He scanned the wood for a mark that he could recognize by sight as well as scent--a particular twisted tree, or a stone resting atop another stone. When he found a spring shining moon-touched in a clearing, he knew that he had discovered what he sought. There was a thin ring of ice around the rim of the spring, and the water moved beneath it.

Bisclavret drew in a long breath, then pulled off his shoes and his overtunic. The rest came next, deep blue undertunic and red chausses and braies.

For a moment, the cold was piercing; his skin prickled sharply, the flesh knitting up in goose-pimples and each hair standing on end. He hunched up at the edge of the water, his hands splayed between his knees and his chin tucked to his chest--

\--and then he was warm.

At once, he caught the scent that had the hounds so frantic. It was more like a hart's than a horse's, if a hart was made of ice and lightning; it made his bones ache and his teeth itch. He whined low, as though he had been kicked.

If he had been a wolf like any other, he would have turned away at once and gone to ground. He felt a chill dread building in his sinews, not a sense of foreboding but a certainty of danger. A lone wolf would certainly have fled, for wolves have no sense of duty or love or debt.

Bisclavret's paws fell soft on the hare's trail, only faintly disturbing the leaves and stones there. He knew enough by now to circle around the hunting party, staying downwind of them and of their quarry. If the king's luck held--but the king's luck always held. He was a charmed hunter, said the ladies at the king's table, and he always caught what he wished to. The board was always laden with coneys cooked with wine and venison well-garnished, geese prepared with sweet sauce and heavy boars in the rutting season, and from across the land the barons came to hunt at their lord's side.

Some said that the king had a trained wolf that he used like a dog on the quarry; others (who knew better) said that the wicked Bisclavret cared nothing for the honor of the hunt or the elegance of the kill, but instead tore out the throats of beasts with his teeth.

Both held a kind of truth.

Before him opened a narrow valley, scattered with broken stones and low bracken; a stream ran through the bottom of it, and its waters were dark and shimmering as glass. A girl of eleven years sat at the foot of a tree at the valley's edge, with her pale hair bound up in plaits and her pale hands folded in the creature's mane. Her eyes were closed, as though she had fallen to sleep with the beast's head in her lap.

Bisclavret had never seen a unicorn before, and yet the creature could be nothing else.

Slowly, he circled to the wide mouth of the valley until the unicorn's scent faded into the smell of cool water and earth. The wind whispered over his fur and through the lingering leaves, carrying with it word of the garwolf.

The unicorn raised its head. In an instant it was on its feet, and in another it was springing down the streambed on cloven hooves; in the third instant Bisclavret was racing after it, the pads of his feet striking droplets like crystals from the chill stream. Ahead of him, he could hear the hounds begin to raise an anxious cry.

At the narrow neck where the valley closed, the king would be waiting with his barons, their spears gripped hard in their hands. The white alaunts would lunge for the unicorn's flanks and tear at them until that white flesh ran red, and some favoured baron would finish the beast with his long knife--

Bisclavret turned away from the chase, then, and followed his own trail back to the spring. His clothes were cold by the time he reached them, and they smelled strongly of garwolf.

If he hurried, he might make it back in time for the kill.

* * *

"—and then like a vapor, it slipped between us and was gone! Have you ever seen such a thing?" The king laughed broadly, his grey eyes glittering with mirth and wine; he seemed almost prouder to have lost the unicorn than he would have been to kill it, for the honor of the quarry only increased the hunter's honor in turn. (He had, thought Bisclavret, been more than usually attentive to his wine, as well. The serving-boys saw that his cup was never empty.)

By now, the story of the hunt was in its fourth telling, as eager a rendition as the first. Laughter rose to the rafters like the smoke from the great fire, as warm and as rich; on every face was written rapture. Wine spilled into beards and hands clapped down on shoulders, and the barons chattered to one another with the good humor of men who have failed bravely together and lost nothing by it.

Only the little virgin sat quietly, with her food untouched on her plate. She looked as though she had lost something that she could not remember having.

"--then in runs our Bisclavret, face red as a madman's, asking who had gotten to make the kill. God's breath, my heart--you were a fearsome sight!" Bisclavret felt his hair ruffled with great affection, and he turned a little into the touch before the king's hand dropped. "It should have been your kill, my friend, and when we do bring down the beast, it will be!"

"What couldn't the king bring down, if he wished it?" asked Gwenäel. "Let him go to Jerusalem, and the Saracen would soon bend knee to him!"

"Let there be no talk of pilgrimages here," laughed Bisclavret. "God hasn't marked him for the Holy Land. The forest is our king's cathedral, and the hart's his communion!" For that the king cuffed him, but he was laughing as he did.

"None of your blasphemy, Bisclavret; if God wishes me to take Jerusalem, we'll swarm through its streets and have the city in an evening. And you'd make a fine, swart Templar, my friend." With a yawn that was as much affectation as exhaustion, the king straightened in his chair and then got to his feet.

When the king rose to take his leave, the barons rose with him. They toasted one last time to the unicorn hunt and its brave champion, and they did not sit again until the king had begun to depart.

A year ago, Bisclavret would have waited a suitably politic space before following his king out. He would have made polite conversation with the ladies at the table, neatly avoiding their questions about his former wife and why she went veiled (or what other marks the king's cunning torturers had left on her milk-white flesh); he would have tried to share hunting stories with barons who sneered behind their hands and called him a brigand.

He knew better, now, than to hold illusions regarding their good opinions. If they wished to think that the king made a boy of him, then they might think it all they liked.

He followed as close behind the king as a shadow.

They traded kisses in the antechamber, chaste as brothers; at the door to the king's chamber, they dismissed his servant and then shared a longer kiss; upon the king's bed, Bisclavret pushed his lord to the blankets and kissed him hot and wine-tasting. The king knotted his fine, slim fingers in Bisclavret's dark hair and drew him closer with a hungry sound--in a moment his teeth were closing on Bisclavret's lower lip and he was whispering something that might have been _more_\--

"You're eager," said Bisclavret, laughter lingering in his voice. He removed the king's shoes, then slowly untucked his lord's braies from his chausses and drew the soft hose down, tracing his fingertips over the muscled curve of his calf. When he looked up again, he found the king regarding him with a strangely soft expression.

"You're beautiful," replied the king, at last. "Even in a man's shape, there's something of the wolf about you--"

"I want feeding; that's all it is," said Bisclavret firmly. "Lie back and let me kiss you."

"I can refuse you nothing." Grinning, flushed with wine and arousal, the king lay back on his pillows with his arms folded behind his head. It was a dare as much as an invitation, and Bisclavret could scarcely resist. In a moment he had undone braies and girdle, and in another he was leaning in to kiss the king's warm lips.

There would come a time--and soon--when the king would need to wed; already his emissaries were negotiating to bring a fair and virginal princess to his bed. From Castile and Saxony, Bohemia and Burgundy, women of noble birth came to Bretagne to lodge for the winter or to join in grand hunts. Some were narrow-faced widows with sultry eyes, others plump girls of no more than twelve; all bore the same look of calculation as they considered the breadth of the hall and the quality of the tapestries. _I want none of them,_ the king had said dismissively, as he and Bisclavret had lain huddled together against the winter's chill. _I want a wife as faithful as yours was false--I want her to ride like a man and curse God like a soldier; I want her dark and lean and strong--_

_It's not a wife you want,_ Bisclavret had said; _Not the kind I'm likely to wed,_ the king had answered, and he had tucked his head at Bisclavret's collar and let the garwolf stroke his back.

It was their custom to undress one another for sleep, once they had tired of making love. When they had begun, it had been a gesture of brotherhood and trust, that the king suffered himself to undress a man lower in rank and that Bisclavret suffered himself to have his clothing removed by another.

As they bared one another to the chill air, though, Bisclavret wondered whether such a gesture could truly erase the gulf between them.

* * *

The king's chapel was barred to Bisclavret, and so he sat outside it and listened to the chants of the Mass rising to the chill air. The words fell together in a great tangle, punctuated once with _Kyrie eleison_ like a wail. _Lord, have mercy._

He rather liked to sit at the chapel door, really. There was the firmness of stone against his back and no disapproving old men to glare at him when his eyes slid closed; he could watch the mist rising beyond the fortress walls and then dissolving in the sunlight. He felt a real and profound communion with the Lord in those moments that the priests could not deny him, although they barred him from the chapel and from the Eucharist. When the stone of the walls threw off sunlight, he could imagine that the Lord might love a garwolf as any other son.

The chapel doors swung open with a sound like a groan, low and wood-resonant; Bisclavret heaved himself up on stiff legs to take his leave. He had no wish to be seen skulking about at the threshold, barred from the chapel and from communion as though he were a devil rather than an honest Christian.

The virgin from the hunt left the chapel first of all, her skirts just brushing the floor behind her and her head down. Something in the look of her arrested him for a moment; perhaps it was the pain in her expression, or perhaps it was the way her shoulders hunched up as though under a great burden; perhaps it was the way her hair was gathered back to bare her bent neck. He shifted on the balls of his feet, and he began to raise his hand--

She looked up at him then, and there was such startlement in her eyes that he turned away.

He shook out his stiff legs and went to see to his horse. No sense in being uncharitable to the beasts, when he might blame the priests for the same want of charity.

The beast had been a fine courser in his prime, as suited for war then as he was now for the hunt; Bisclavret had seen many good horses ruined on the field, but his horse had been lightly used or else well-kept; his joints didn't seem to pain him, and his coat had kept its gloss. Bisclavret had endeared himself to the king on this horse's back not five years ago, the beast plunging froth-lipped and battle-mad through the mercenaries that sought easy spoil on their way to Italy; in those days Bisclavret had been glorious, his name sung in every hall and his place assured at every table.

He began to check his horse's hooves for stones or loose nails in the shoes, uneven calkins, any sign of undue wear. The horse bore the ministrations with great patience, obligingly raising his hooves at each suggestion of a push to allow Bisclavret to examine them.

When the garwolf straightened again, two children were regarding him solemnly.

"He sits outside the chapel and can't come in," one told the other, as though she thought that Bisclavret couldn't hear. "Mama says that's because he's a devil." She held a bit of horsebread lightly in her hand, as though she had meant to offer it a treat to a favorite animal or to eat it herself in secret.

As she caught Bisclavret's gaze, though, her fingers tightened, dropping crumbs to the floor.

"We should go," said the younger of the two, a boy with hair as pale as bone. His eyes were all white around the edges, his pupils contracted; even as a man, Bisclavret could smell fear on him. "We should go, I'm scared--"

"Go, then," snapped Bisclavret, and the children shrieked and ran.

* * *

There was no hunt on the morrow--while the barons met to break their fast, rain and hail sliced down from the lowering clouds. Children ran out to gather hailstones, some as big as barleycorns and some as big as quail's-eggs; they laughed and flung the largest ones at their brothers and sisters, shrieking when a stone struck home.

"'Sdeath, the weather's been unholy cold of late," muttered a baron from the south of Bretagne. "I never knew a winter so cold--could it be that--"

"Your hide's thin; it's no more than that," answered Bisclavret sharply. "And if you can't bear a bit of chill, then go back to your wife and let her warm you."

The other barons laughed, but with a kind of forced heartiness. They all felt their southern cousin's unease at the storm that had forestalled their hunt. It fell too soon on the heels of the unicorn's escape; although none of them dared voice their misgivings, even Bisclavret felt a deep dread settling in his bones. It made his back teeth hurt.

He longed to be curled up in a quiet cavern in the forest, the scent of blood and ice in his nose. Since the king had taken Bisclavret to his bed, the garwolf had played the man for him. He only occasionally dreamed of that happy year curled up at his sovereign's feet, with his tailtip tickling his nose and the king's strong fingers buried in the ruff at the back of his neck; they had spent many warm evenings together before the fire, in mute and easy companionship.

The dream of blood, though, returned again and again. At times he would fling himself awake with his naked skin flushed and a copper-hot taste burning his tongue, certain that he had torn the king apart--he could almost _feel_\--

His teeth tore into bread. At the head of the table, the king called for a song, and a dark-eyed Provençal boy rose at once to the task. His voice was still sweet as a flute's, although age was beginning to crack it. _L'autrier m'iere levaz,_ he sang;

_sor mon cheval montaz, _   
_sui por deduire alaz _   
_laz une praierie. _   
_Ne fui gaires esloignaz _   
_can me sui arrestaz _   
_et dessendi en praz _   
_soz une ante florie--_

"I hadn't known we'd been invaded by southerners," groused Gwenäel, his body turned to Bisclavret's as though to shield them from the southern baron's ears. "Give me proper Breton music and I'll dance like any man, but this Provençal stuff--I wouldn't give a load of fresh shit for it."

"The king enjoys it," said Bisclavret simply; "That he does," Gwenäel allowed at last. He knew better than to say, as many might, _The king, God bless him, loves many things that lesser men couldn't bear._

Bisclavret licked his lips, then tipped back his cup and drank deep. Still the Provençal boy sang on, his eyes half-closed as though his own song beguiled him, his lips full and red and welling with music--the king did love his fine, dark singers from Provence and the Languedoc and Catalonia--

_Perrins m'ait engingnie,_   
_car onkes en sa vie _  
_si bel ne me servi; _  
_por ceu se lou defi _  
_d'un mes de coupperie!_

Outside the hall, the hail continued to fall.

* * *

_The wood is more than dark. There are dark scents abroad, heavymusky and animal; they are the scent of the bear's den when she is heavy-laden with cubs, the scent of great red harts in rut with their racks locked. They are fecund, fertile smells--and through them is threaded the scent of lightning._

_Bisclavret raises his muzzle to the sky, his breath faintly clouding the crisp air. He cannot remember having shed his clothes, but he must have shed them._

_He begins to run._

_He knows the water under his feet--knows the ice-shot clarity of the stream in the moonlight, the way that the valley narrows to a slender neck ahead._

_He knows what is waiting for him there; there is an ache behind his eyes that nearly blinds him. The night is opening before him, dark animal heaviness sloughing off to reveal a core of incandescent light--_

_Bisclavret wakes._

_Although the king sleeps peacefully at his side, there is blood in Bisclavret's mouth._

* * *

The king rode out in gay red and gold and blue, his retinue around him, the ladies sharing jokes on their palfreys and the barons laughing to one another as they jostled for position. It was an uncommonly warm day, and the brilliance of the sun had lightened even Bisclavret's mood considerably. The trees seemed as widely spaced as columns in a cathedral, with light spilling through the clinging leaves.

They left their virgin in her accustomed place in the valley, with a psaltery in her lap to charm the time away and bid the unicorn lie at her side. She put on a brave smile, her dark green skirts arranged modestly about her legs and her teeth gritted against the faint chill of the breeze; she was not happy in her state, perhaps, but she acquiesced with seemly patience. Her father kissed her brow as the hunting party fell back to send out the dogs.

At the neck of the valley, the lymers began to bell in low, throaty tones that echoed from the valley's steep sides. It was less a call to the chase than a dirge.

Bisclavret felt himself grow suddenly cold. He knew what the dogs had found there.

* * *

The little blonde virgin sat in queenly state, her lips pale at the edges and her complexion rather green. Her gaze kept straying back to the unicorn's head, which rested upright on a plate on the banquet table with ribbon-wrapped vines and autumn apples arranged festively around the neck. The scullions had scrubbed valiantly at the mane, but they had been unable to clean away the bloodstains. Nonetheless, the creature had been teased into a fair semblance of life, its lips drawn back in a snarl and its eyes only just glazed over. With sweet-smelling oil rubbed over its fur, the stink of the meat hardly escaped.

The unicorn's meat had turned rancid in the time it took to bring it back to the keep. The flesh had lain cool upon the table, leaking dark blood that had stained the wood and filled the air with the scent of decay. "Then do what you can to make it look fit for the table," the king had said, finally. There had been something more than troubled in his face; although he hid it well, a tightness still lingered at the corners of his eyes, and he ate little. It might have been the lateness of the evening, or the smoke from the damp-burning fire, but it seemed no natural weariness.

Bisclavret said nothing. He remembered the look of horror that had colored the king's face when he had seen the unicorn's throat torn out, its viscera lying half-submerged in the streambed. There had been no trace of the animal that had killed the creature; there had been no footprint or scent to follow.

"We might do well to make a pilgrimage," the king said, and Bisclavret turned to him with his brows raised.

"A pilgrimage, my lord?" he asked, swallowing thickly.

"To the Holy Land. To take back Jerusalem for Christendom--but you're laughing at me, Bisclavret."

"Never laughing," answered Bisclavret, although he was smiling a skeletal smile; he could feel his lips drawn thin with it. "But it's not like you to propose a crusade when you could propose a hunt."

"I'm not in a humor to hunt," said the king. "I wish the creature had--"

Bisclavret took his hand. _I wish the creature had died a noble death,_ the king had meant to say, but even a noble death would have been too much to bear. The king laced his fingers briefly through Bisclavret's, their fingertips warm and grease-slick, and then let go.

Bisclavret shifted the meat on his plate, but he couldn't bring himself to eat it. The taste of blood lingered in his mouth, and whether it was his wife's or the unicorn's or the king's, he couldn't have said.

Finally, he threw his mutton to the dogs. They sprang upon it readily, snapping at one another for the choicest scraps.

"Is it guilt?" asked Bisclavret at last, when the heavy silence had grown unbearable. "Is this pilgrimage of yours a penance?"

"All men are sinful," said the king, softly. "Why shouldn't we repent?" The hollows around his eyes were dark in the firelight, and the shadows etched the lines more deeply into his brows.

The king did not call for his Provençal singer, and Gwenäel toasted to no one and nothing.

When at last the king rose to retire, the assembled host rose with him. The little virgin stood from the queen's seat--the seat that no queen had ever held--and the king raised his cup to her. It was, thought Bisclavret, an acknowledgment of her unwilling complicity in their crime; it was a gesture of absolution as much as of respect.

In the darkness, the king lay awake with his eyes wide open, and although Bisclavret kissed his throat and took his hand, he would not be drawn from his thoughts.

Once the king had fallen to sleep, Bisclavret counted heartbeats. He could feel his blood surging under his skin, his breath gathering in his chest and then releasing slowly.

When he was certain that the king would not wake, he dressed and left the room. He passed the heavy door and the servant's narrow bed, scarcely sparing a glance for the poor, thin man snoring away under his blankets. The antechamber was dark, as was the corridor that followed it, but Bisclavret knew his way.

* * *

When morning light spilled through the German glass of the window, the king woke to find his bed empty. He stretched out his hand into the space where Bisclavret usually lay, curling his fingers in the linens and then closing his hand there.

* * *

Beneath an outcropping of stone, there lay a wolf with his nose tucked against his tail. Every so often he would kick and twitch, tail beating the cold earth to send up clouds of dust, as though he dreamed of running away, away--


End file.
